Of course, the odds of me finding the technical help I need for this are Buckley's, but I'll just leave this link here, and let you figure out how I did it.

I'm still waiting on the update of the im@s compendium, so I can resume fielding requests (Crisu, hint- actually, he's sort of busy right now, so I have to wait until he's free to deal with the modifications) so I decided to work on something else.

For most part, I've been talking with someone who's been proven rather enlightening over the last few days, but as you probably can conclude, I'm not a programmer. I'm a tinkerer, and I come up with hackneyed stuff using intuition, some guesswork about how they'd structure it, and quite a lot of luck.

Due to a legal decision on his end, he declined to give the easy way, which is a decision I respect. He did however drop a huge series of hints, so I have to craft a hard way instead. It'd be a very LEGAL hard way, but 'hard' does not begin to describe the theoretical process, but it's doable. (In fact, it was demonstrated after I followed some instructions.)

But this is where my trail runs very thin, because simply put, journalism contacts and a general understanding of things will only get you so far, and I know when I'm out of my depth. My contact has graciously gave me enough information (more than he should have really), and it's up to me (and anyone who wants to help me) to make that bridge with the data we have.

I'm going to throw this out, although I do not believe I can find the technical expertise here, but you know, hope springs eternal. I'm more after ideas for places where I can direct my search, as well as idea testing to check if the idea actually works.

I'm not going to put anyone's hopes up, except for the simple fact that I have the feeling we're significantly closer than you'll ever get to it.

Whoa I thought the files were encrypted and no one ever figured out/put in the effort to decrypt them. Hot.

Actually, some of the tiles aren't encrypted, and I figured out enough about them via a hex editor to make some quick hot swaps (which led to the videos I made for laughs.) since it's fairly well organized if you know what you're looking for..

The person I spoke with DOES have a unpacker for the files I want access to (And I know where the files are too!) we need it for, but for legal reasons won't release it.

Thing is... the same person ALSO told me that you didn't actually NEED to repack the files. You can trick the game into looking elsewhere for the files it needs, and leave the packs alone.

So my problem is... uh, getting my hands on the unencrypted data from the packs. Consequently, I need to talk with a programmer that knows what he or she is doing, and explain what I know, and what I can provide (and attempt to set up.)

I think it's safe to say that it's a significant jump and someone else is getting leaps and bounds in the development department.

Due to legal reasons, we have fragments, but I (or a team if one can be gathered) have to manually recreate the steps used, as he can't (and won't) release the tools he created. Mostly on the 'So he doesn't go to jail' side of things due to his location.

At this point I'm doing basic manipulation. I haven't done any major break in yet, and need LOTS of help with this.